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"I've been listening to the Catholic Answers Live podcast for about a year now. Today I heard Patrick Coffin say you were reaching all nations, and I felt I had to confirm it! I love your show and I learn every day. Thank you very much!”

Leon Bloy once wrote, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

Why? Because to be anything less than holy is to remain unactualized.

Huh?

Let me offer an illustration: Suppose you went out and bought a flower pot containing one daffodil bulb buried in rich soil. You take the pot, put it in a closet, and for the next two weeks feed the bulb nothing but Coca-Cola.

How should one respond to the old schoolboy retort, “If everything needs a cause, who caused God?”

First, philosophers and theologians do not maintain that whatever exists needs a cause. Instead, they propose that certain things need causes, such as things that have a beginning or things that don’t have to exist.

If something came into existence at a certain point in time—that is, if it had a beginning—then there needs to be a cause, an explanation, for why it came to be. But...

On a recent flight from Philadelphia to San Diego I had the following conversation with a woman—we’ll call her Mary—who believed that all religions were equal. I wrote down the conversation a few days later. Here it is:

All Religions Are Equal

“I suppose when it comes down to it,” Mary said, “the main thing is that people are sincere in what they believe. All religions are equal.”

~ Pope John XXII, in his Bull "Quorumdam exigit" (1317); urging a group of separatist friars who engaged in extreme asceticism to follow the Faith (e.g., Romans 13:1-2) and obey their leaders (from the article "Spirituals")